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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Retreater" data-source="post: 8314014" data-attributes="member: 42040">One of my current campaigns is feeling a little subpar. I've started a thread (linked below) that addresses one of the problems (as I see it) should you want some more context, but I'll provide the nuts and bolts here in this thread.[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.enworld.org/threads/do-you-tinker-with-adventures-to-make-them-winnable.680740/[/URL]So I've found a few examples in articles and videos online about how to start a good campaign, but I'm at a loss of how to fix a campaign that is spiraling down the drain. I turned to my players to ask them how I can change it to make it better, but gods love 'em, they're newish players who don't know how to describe what they want or are afraid to hurt my feelings. But the message still comes through that they're frustrated, not engaged by the story, and feel like each session is just a grind to get XP so they can move along.Here are some points that came up, which might be pertinent to what's going on.1) A near-TPK in the first session took out some of the characters that had the start for some interesting backstory. To get the survivors to adventure with the replacement characters took some major suspension of disbelief, and the party personalities haven't gelled yet. 2) The adventure presented is a sandbox with many quests not linking directly to the main story. And when the main story is that sub freezing temperatures are destroying an entire region, cloaked in perpetual night, in the talons of an evil goddess, it's hard for my players to want to focus on anything that isn't connected to that.3) There are around a dozen towns, settlements, encampments, which are laid out in scant detail. The book might describe 2-3 locations and a handful of villagers in each town. This cursory detail makes it hard to bring the world to life and - as a result - harder for the players to feel a part of the world and their problems.4) This lack of detail, unconnected quests, and perceived high difficulty carry over to the way the players handle their characters. There is little roleplay or character development (though they've really enjoyed this part of the game in past campaigns - homebrew and Curse of Strahd.) The mini-quests don't keep a consistent story arc going on, and the early character death made players not especially care about developing their characters' personalities.There are certainly things (especially those things in the aforementioned thread) that I can fix. I can adjust the challenges to better fit the playstyle of the players and their characters' abilities. I can attempt to tie together some of the sites into a more cohesive story. I can create a deus ex machina NPC group to explain how things fit together and give them clues about the adventure sites. I can even use a plot element from a later chapter (the Chardalyn dragon) to destroy some of the excess towns so I can focus on making a couple of them really interesting and detailed. It will take a lot of work to do these things, but being a DM isn't easy.What would you suggest to improve my campaign? It can be specific to Rime of the Frostmaiden or not. (I already have a GM's Guide to the campaign, and suffice it to say, it doesn't go nearly far enough in fixing the issues coming up for my group.) And I'm not even sure that the problem is with the adventure, it could be that sometimes every DM runs a stinky campaign that needs some improvement.</blockquote>

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